My Weary Travel's End
by fleetwood-mouse
Summary: Five times Sherlock remembers John, and one time he doesn't have to. (Johnlock, hiatus, reunion(


**Summary:** Five times Sherlock remembers John and one time he doesn't have to.

**Notes:** Written for the lovely nox_candida, who was kind enough to bid on my heart in the AO3 Fundraiser auction, suggested a fantastic prompt, and oh my God this is so late and I am so sorry. I hope you enjoy it, though!

**DISCLAIMER:** I have no affiliation whatsoever with Moffat, Gattis, or Arthur Conan Doyle, to whom all the credit for this universe belongs. Aside from the fun I had writing it, I have not and will not profit from this story in any way.

"How heavy do I journey on the way  
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)  
Doth teach the ease and that repose to say  
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.'"  
Shakespeare, Sonnet 50

i.

The man doesn't look anything like John. The hair is wrong, first of all—dark and tightly curled, closer to Sherlock's own than anything else. He is also too tall—by a good four inches, no less—and at least a decade older, with grey dappling his beard and wrinkles creasing his brown skin. His posture is not that of a military man; though he's kept himself reasonably fit until now, his age is beginning to show. The recent softness is most evident in his face, as with many men his age, but Sherlock notes the beginnings of a belly as well.

They could hardly be more dissimilar in appearance, so there's no logical cause for the note of recognition that peals through Sherlock's chest, stopping him in place. It's an odd feeling: something withered and twisted wizened now re-animated, briefly, by the familiar, by like calling to like. He knows it's illogical for his heart to jump, for his throat to close around a name.

The average person, illogical and sentimental, would feel no such twinge. The average person would fail entirely to perceive the resemblance and, once clued in, would likely think it somewhat cruel. Sherlock knows this to be the truth—an infuriating, incomprehensible truth—but he cannot help but recognise his friend in the man's limp. He's reasonably sure that John wouldn't find the comparison particularly flattering, but the resemblance of their injuries was a simple fact, and to his mind, there is nothing to be gained by taking offence.

Cruel or no, Sherlock does find it a bit strange to be comforted by this reminder of John's pain, of how a soldier might suffer in the unforgiving sea of civility and order. This would please John even less. He'd object first of all to having his weakness exposed, to being reminded—for John, the awareness of his of his wounds was what made him suffer. He'd be cross with Sherlock for being so quick to associate him with such an infirmity; hypocritical, for surely he'd be just as angry if Sherlock were to claim he didn't think of him at all. He'd let his emotions blind him to the fact of the matter: that Sherlock can't help what he sees, or, for that matter, what other people don't.

Sherlock is fascinated by the resemblance, but he hasn't come here to bask in familiarity of the man's walk. That's not why he's come here, so far away, and he doesn't have the luxury of time, so he makes up his mind to go on. He steals another glance before taking that first step away and wonders, idly, how John might be walking now, whether his limp has returned, whether his death could have had that effect.

The thought opens an unwelcome pit in his stomach and he steadies himself with a deep breath. The idea won't quite disappear, though; the fear it inspires is deep-seated. But deletion is a process, he reminds himself, and some bits of data are more persistent than others. Just because it doesn't disappear at first pass doesn't mean he won't be able to wipe it clean at some later juncture. He turns right, still trailing the man absently.

He watches the soles of the man's loafers as he walks—new, and worth rather more than John would spend on a single pair of shoes.

It's unlikely that John's limp has returned, he reasons. John knows that it was psychosomatic—Sherlock had told him so—and therefore, John should be guarded against any tricks his mind might play. John is practical, and vigilant. John is a soldier. John does not repeat his mistakes.

Sherlock continues to follow the man at a safe distance, watching intently all the while, his real quarry quite abandoned. The lift of his arches, his shuffling gait. The way the pain in his thigh upsets the line of his shoulders. His fingers as they grip the cane, the bend of his elbow, the crease of his jacket.

Sherlock doesn't make any attempt to tease out the circumstances of the injury, the years of therapy, the residual damage—they hold no interest for him. Instead, he just observes and follows, falling unconsciously into step, letting his eyes adjust until the picture changes before them. Dark curls untwist, lightening to dishwater gold, leather and zips are replaced by wool and buttons. The early morning fog fades to flickering firelight and dust motes, the soft colours and softer light of home.

He follows for another few blocks, his chest painfully full and foggy, until the man turns again and enters a bookshop, the chime on the door clanging behind him. Sherlock, though, keeps walking without a sideways glance, without breaking his stride. His work is ruined for today; he knows this. He'll find a place to sleep and take his chances tomorrow.

There's a spot he's been watching, a damp and quiet space beneath a bridge. It's empty enough, just a bit of assorted rubbish, an old tyre.

He curls up with his back against the rough concrete and fishes through his pockets for the battered Nokia he now carries.

He stares at the backlit screen, too bright in against crushed charcoal of the sky. He calls up a memory of quiet strength beneath denim and cotton, the warm security of a curving scapula, the elegance of fingers curled around the butt of a gun. He examines his own hands, the calluses he'd never imagined would fade so quickly, and he can see the crinkling around John's mouth when Sherlock played Tchaikovsky, the gummy bleariness in his eyes of another long night up with a case.

He tucks the mobile safely back in his pocket. He could text Molly and she would answer him, obviously, but all things considered, it's _unlikely_ that John's limp has returned.

ii.

Abstractly, he knows that all of them have families—logically, they must. Or at the very least, they'd once had. A set of long-ago parents, perhaps a sibling or two, distant cousins. Maybe even a former partner, if their life path had allowed for it, if there had been time and opportunity to find someone before it became clear, before it was obvious what a glaring weakness that was.

The lesson, in any case, is that there is no escaping basic human connection. Strive as one might for isolation, there will always be the risk of a familiar face on a crowded train platform, some long-forgotten classmate in a coffee shop or out for a Sunday stroll. Everyone started out with a family, everyone had connections, regardless of the life they may be living now.

What Sherlock never expected, however, was that some of them still do—and not just the kind of distant relatives that make for awkward Christmas dinners, but real ones, cohesive units, families of their own choosing. In this case, for example, a pretty young wife and a small daughter, chubby-cheeked and likely to freckle up just like her mother.

Initially, it's with disbelief that he watches them—disbelief tempered by a vague, grudging respect for Parker, who has managed this balancing act for so long, for the inhuman effort and constant planning that it must take to keep them out of the crosshairs. This task is not a simple one, and much better men have failed.

Soon, however, he's watching the girl swing and jump and tumble and all he feels is a sense of embarrassment bordering on guilt. It's appalling, the foolish presumption of this otherwise capable man, his assumption that he's above it all. That he's allowed his selfish desire for companionship and some semblance of a normal life to outweigh the risk to other's lives, to his work.

Sherlock watches the young mother watch her daughter. They'll lead him to Parker soon enough—doubtless he could manage even without their unwitting help, but data is data. He waits.

The girl runs and plays with clear enthusiasm while, from her post on the bench, her mother fiddles sporadically with her smartphone. Judging from the movement of her fingers, she's jumping between texting, reading, and a game—a word puzzle, most likely. Despite the distraction, she is paying enough attention to notice when her daughter tumbles off the swingset, landing sprawled in the dirt below and letting out a wail like an air-raid siren.

She rushes to her side and scoops her up right away, making songbird coos and checking for any signs of a real injury. Settled on the bench, the girl quiets down almost immediately (an audience, Sherlock notes, can be a rather vicious motivator in its own right) and then she watches, sniffling, as her mother removes a small first-aid kit from her pocketbook to dress her scraped knees.

It's then that Sherlock _sees_. That's not quite the word for it, though; he's never had a memory like this one. It's not a replay of one single instance so much as a composite, a layering of a year's worth of similar scenes, one atop the next like sheets of onion-skin paper.

It's obvious that the woman knows nothing about medicine (she is a financial analyst or something similar, or once was—currently debating a return to work after a prolonged maternity leave, as evidenced by her expensive but impractical manicure: the first in months). Regardless, as he watches her inexperienced ministrations, Sherlock is sure he can feel John's expert hands on his skin, pressing, palpating, checking for bruised ribs. Gentle enough to avoid causing pain but still strong, and confident in the knowledge and instincts of his practiced fingertips, diagnosing skin to skin.

The girl cries out as her mother swabs a line of disinfectant, and Sherlock unthinkingly wills himself to relax into John's steady grip, stills himself for the needle to stitch up deep cuts in his hand, his shoulders, his face. Once, just once, he'd had to do the same for John.

He still remembers the sudden onslaught of treacherous fear that threatened to break his detached concentration. He knew John better than anyone could (_knows_, he corrects—he still does, he must) and that had only made it all the more difficult. Sherlock knows—with a scientist's level of precision— the mechanism of each of John's muscles, the precise physics of his movements. That gives him a responsibility to John's skin, the curve of his lip, the wry quirk of his mouth—volumes of data that he's held onto despite all logic, making him uniquely qualified for this task.

_"Just get on with it," John tells him, fingers drumming impatiently on his thigh. "Keep stalling and I'm gonna lose my nerve."_

_It takes all of Sherlock's willpower to steady his hand, though he knows that this is no different to his work: caring won't help him be any faster, any better. So he swallows down his trembling and raises his hand, raises the needle. John grips the table, knuckles white and veined, closes his eyes. Sherlock for his part, keeps his fear at bay ("oxaloacetate, citrate, aconitate") and begins to close the gash in his neat, precise stitches ("isocitrate, oxalosuccinate, alpha-ketoglutarate"), tongue throbbing sharply between his incisors._

The young mother fretting over scraped knees—Sherlock is certain that she will never have to stitch a mate up in a pinch, that her fine, white hands wouldn't be lost thrust into a soldier's chest cavity. Caring, however, is something she has in spades.

He watches her dole out a series of reassuring pats and touches, absorbs her calming litany of soft words. Different, obviously, to John's more stoic bedside manner but not inherently unworthy for it. But no matter the depth of her affections, Sherlock can hardly imagine that she'd abstain from anesthesia herself because their object could not be trusted with opiates.

_John's skin goes red, then grey-white, forehead beading with sweat. His palms are marked with tiny half-moons from the effort of holding still, and breathless, he curses Sherlock like a true soldier until the pain receded enough for him to admire the precision of his work._

_"If I'm not careful,"__ he gasps out, wiping his brow, locating, somehow, his everything's-fine face, "you'll be better at this too. Won't even need me around anymore."_

Sherlock watches the girl and she watches her mother, eyes reading her like a sailor does the evening horizon. She responds to her mother's cues, she mirrors her movements, she moves into her touch.

People don't touch Sherlock like that. People don't touch him at all. People shy away from him, his pointed edges and biting tongue and flashing sarcasm. And it's just as well that they're afraid.

John, though. John wipes away his blood and puts him back together. John's body has learned to follow his instinctively, melding, choreographed, wires stretched between their limbs. John hands him cups of tea and brushes chills up his arm; John pushes his feet off the sofa, or clutches his hand and his sleeve and they run.

John's fingers rest over his pulse as they leap fences and barrel down alleyways. John crawls over him to get his book, feels his forehead with cool fingers, crouches him down into a corner when his brain is battering at his ears and his skull, and John talks, cool and commanding, into his face until it recedes.

The mother shuts the kit back into her handbag and bows her head, ducking down to press a kiss to the girl's knee—just above the plaster. Sherlock's face flushes and his ears burn. She plants another on the girl's hand, the top of her giggling head.

He's up from his bench and stalking away, upending his bag of bread crumbs to the pigeons, who fall upon it in a greedy horde.

There are many ways to trick a man, and Sherlock has no shortage of skills in this area. It can be even easier to trick several men, especially if the police here are anything like their London counterparts. Either way, it's finished soon enough and he takes care to make it look like a normal mugging gone wrong, helping himself to the man's cash and cards before discarding the wallet a few feet from the body. A small gesture, to be sure, but likely enough to throw anyone off the scent, to discourage any enquiry into possible criminal connections.

John would have read into this, he thinks. Would have written it up in his blog, even, if it weren't so incriminating. But Sherlock doesn't think about that. Starting that day, he does his best to avoid thinking of John, of the warmth of his hands and his gaze and his heart, but then the seaside nights are so cold and damp, and any thoughts he breathes into the wind won't be heard anyway.

iii.

"Hello?"

Silence. Three point five seconds pass.

"_Hello?_"

Sherlock bites his tongue counts the breaths until he hears John hang up. He doubles over and pulls his feet in close to his body, pulse hot and thrumming in his ears.

He notices that his hands are shaking. He knows why that is, of course, he's Sherlock Holmes and he knows exactly why, but he decides to find some sustenance, even if it won't solve anything. It must Wednesday by now, he thinks. He can justify it.

It doesn't stop the shaking, but it's a distraction, which helps in its own way. There's so few of them these days. Sometimes he wishes he'd have thought to bring the skull.

The next time he does it, he's staked out in an old telephone box, waiting to catch sight of Moran's man Torvald as he leaves what Sherlock is sure is their hideout. He's incredibly grateful for the popularisation of mobile phones—just a few years ago, he'd never have been able to monopolise one for so long.

Still, it's been nearly twenty minutes with no sign of Torvald. Nor anyone else, for that matter. The area is busy enough that Sherlock thinks he can manage another five holed up in there without attracting too much attention, but Torvald is dangerous, one of the wiliest men on his list, and there's no being too careful where he's concerned. Sherlock decides to call it a loss and pick up his surveillance from somewhere else.

But then his hand hesitates on the door handle, and before he has time to debate it, he's thrusting it into his pocket and rummaging through his coins, and then his fingers are dialing the familiar number, his heart pounding traitorously away.

"Hullo?"

A good mood this time. Soft music in the background. People talking. Sherlock's stomach twists.

"Hello, is anyone—?"

Sherlock bites back a curse as his field of vision narrows to down around one lone, retreating figure—Torvald. He slams down the receiver and fights the initial urge to burst through the door and take off in hot pursuit. Instead, he schools his feet, he slouches down into his disguise, his shabby clothes and his new posture.

He moves slowly, feebly, bent by some unseen weight—he does until he won't, that is, until he springs and then it will already be too late.

Torvald's not easy, though, and Sherlock doesn't get him, can't get close enough without risking himself. He's gained information, though, valuable data to help him calculate his next move.

That night, crouched in the stairwell of an abandoned building, he's smearing dirt and grime across his skin, and a thought wells up—not only has he missed his man, he failed to get his money's worth—and he surprises himself by laughing out loud. The sound is strange in his ears, too loud, and he struggles to hush the unfamiliar noise.

He rubs his coat against the rough concrete, wearing thin patches into the sleeves. He pops off a button, tears the stitching in the pocket. This new disguise is a good one, and Torvald falls the next evening.

His weakness, however, is something he doesn't indulge again, not for weeks and weeks. It's hard to keep track of the time recently, to mark the days as they drift past, but he knows that he can't afford to slip up;. And besides, since he made it so far before he did it once, he should be able to hold out at least that long again.

Finally, when his burner is about to run out, he sits back on the sand and sends one last text to Molly. He's not sure whether it will be worth the risk to give her the number for the next one, much as he'd appreciate the comfort of a lifeline. He'll have to wait and see.

It takes him some time to compose the text. He holds the chunky lump of plastic in both hands and stares out at the sea. It's silly to look at it this late at night, all undulating shades of black and a ridge of hills that hides where the sky begins, but the lack of scenery is calming, and the nothingness a balm for the storm beating against the inside of his rib cage.

In the end, he just gives her the information he needs her to know; he doesn't ask about John. She does tell him, though, because she knows—how could she not?

_He's doing better._

Sherlock stares through those three words, iridescent in the green light of the screen, absorbing every pixel until he's sure they've sunk into his irises. Then, with dull fingers, he dials.

It rings a few times—it's late, and John's in tucked tight under hospital corners, his mobile on the table. Sherlock waits.

"Hello?" John's voice is thick, throaty; he's been drifting off over a book, glass of water on the bedside table. Dozing but not quite dreaming. Sherlock grabs onto the sound of it and just breathes. "Hello, is anybody—?"

Sherlock chucks the mobile into the water. The dark surface doesn't change, but he imagines it sinking down and down, the vibrations of John's voice rippling through the current, gradually changing the face of the sea.

iv.

He has no data about the way John tastes.

Or… none that he's allowed to think about, anyway. He's quick to push such thoughts aside; he has to be. They're even less worthy of consideration than the other sentimental musings plaguing him as of late, and they merit no space on his hard drive.

But the meals they ate, both when John forced him to and those times when he sought out food of his own volition, those are still here. It's hardly practical to go looking for them, though, not in terms of resources, the risk of exposure, or the goal of completing his mission.

At least, it's not until one unseasonably cold afternoon when the wind is shrieking so loudly and the rain is falling in such pounding columns as to make surveillance impossible. Then, Sherlock resorts to taking shelter in a warm, well-lit restaurant, where he finds himself deconstructing a plate of keema curry over the better part of two hours.

It's hardly the kind of experiment he prefers; he can't compile data into spreadsheets and graphs, nor apply it to his work. What he can do, however, is examine the ratio of peas to mince, or compare the amount of cumin against the London curries he knows John likes. The balance of spicy versus savoury versus the size of the serving dish. The size, shape and heft of the naan. The bite and snap of the pink pickled onions.

He knows John well enough to experience this; he rips and dips with John's fingers, tastes with John's tongue and chews with John's teeth. He feels it in the movements of his jaw, the line of his eyebrows, the rosy tones the spice coaxes out of his cheeks. He skips the lassi he'd ordinarily order because John doesn't care for sweets, and instead he lingers over the chai, resting the delicate teacup below his lower lip (_thinner, paler, straighter—John's_), savouring the fragrant steam before tasting the drink itself.

He gets some sideways looks from the waiter, who probably wishes he'd hurry up and finish his meal, but no one asks him to settle the check. It's not particularly crowded—at this time of day, few restaurants are—and Sherlock's being quiet, not making any fuss. John, he knows, objects very much to causing a scene in public.

Part of Sherlock wants to get angry at his own foolishness, how he is deliberately and unnecessarily slowing himself down. It's Thursday and so he shouldn't even require food, but nonetheless he stops and he lingers eats considerably more than he would on a day when he _did_ need to refuel. He knows he should get angry about it, but in the end, he can't seem to muster up the vitriol.

Besides, it's obvious that he's not eating for fuel—he's eating for memory, for John, as John. Because John always needed to eat (upwards of two, three times every day, slowing them both down), and John always wanted Sherlock to eat, was pleased when he did. And because John and Sherlock used to eat together, at the flat or at restaurants, where John would smirk and kick him under the table if his deductions got too audible or rude, and because it's rubbish to be alone when one is accustomed to being part of a whole, to glancing left and seeing security, faith, and a certain pawkish humour reflected back. He can't have this, though, he can't be with John, but Sherlock knows John so intimately that for a while, he can _be_ him, and that's something. Or at least it's not nothing.

When Sherlock goes to pay, he scatters some fennel seeds in the palm of his hand (he doesn't particularly like them, obviously, but John does) and crunches them between his back teeth. When the man tries to hand him his change, Sherlock replaces the little spoon and deliberately upsets the dish, just so he can apologise the way John would.

"Oh, sorry!" he says, and his voice is higher, softer than usual. "I'm so sorry; here, let me..."

No harm done, it turns out. Quite all right. Sherlock has to wonder whether he is, though.

v.

Sherlock has always been amazed by how little regard most people have for the sense of smell. The nose is a noble organ, and finely honed olfactory skills are a necessity for anyone who desires to truly comprehend the world they live in.

It's also (as he has begun to realise, not without a keen sense of betrayal) very closely tied to memory. And while he has long years of practice tuning out irrelevant visual, auditory, or tactile input as necessary, it turns out that scent may have a more intrusive, destructive power.

It's natural, he supposes, for the smell of chlorine to call up shades of blue, muted lights, and echoing voices. He just doesn't see why it should also produce a sharp pang of fear in his gut, a sense of vertigo, a spiralling, exponential dread that threatens to consume his vision.

Smells are pervasive but subtle. He finds that they cannot be avoided, that by the time he's become aware of them, they've already begun to stir the surface of his subconscious like ripples in a pond.

There is no reason that the smell of gun solvent should twist his gut into knots, nor that a sudden breeze of familiar aftershave should make him miss the shot with trembling fingers and damp, clammy palms.

_It's a matter of evolution_, says a voice in the back of his mind, calm even as Desrochers whirls toward him, alerted to his presence.

It's an advantageous association, to be able to de-construct an environment, to link its constituent elements to the concepts of fear and pain and flight, to let past experience inform one's behaviour in future confrontations.

It's the same mechanism that allows Sherlock, in response to a familiar twist of Desrochers' hand, to wrench his wrist upwards and stomp down on the man's instep, delivering enough pain to maintain possession of his gun. It's the same as the muscle memory that makes his aim so true (well, for the second shot, anyway).

Smell is an ancient instinct, and the connection between instinct and fear is essential to survival; that much is obvious. But why the same process should function to link olfactory stimuli with other, non-essential responses is something Sherlock cannot fathom. To him, it's an unforgivable failure of human biology.

He revisits this thought weeks later over the provisions he's filched from the chemist's. The sharp pinch of iodine, the rubbery-soft odor of the plasters make something rise up in his throat. It's not the burning of bile—it's something sunlight warm and anguished and almost unbearable in its familiarity—but he swallows it down anyway, cursing the physicality he'd sooner be rid of.

He visits a department store and lifts a jumper for warmth, a good one. He wears it out of sight, beneath his shabby coat, and though the colour is drab enough to escape notice, the material is soft and thick. It hides the sharp protuberance of his ribs and shields him from the biting wind. It's exactly what he needs as the seasons edge onward, covering the Earth with forgetful snow.

He wears it for exactly one night before abandoning it out of necessity. He knows he will never sleep fitfully with it on, not with its scent of wool warming against human skin, which winds itself insinuatingly into his nostrils and wraps around his larynx like ivy. The smell eclipses his wit and his purpose, it leaves him mute and atrophied and desperate. He leaves it, folded neatly, beside a skip where outcasts like him sleep, or would, if they had any brains.

And some days, the smell of tea is everywhere. He knows it can't possibly be as ubiquitous as it seems, not even here in England. Even with the hoards of people carrying their paper cups to and from their offices, even when a plastic lid pops off and splashes it across the sidewalk, he's sure that at least some of it must be his imagination. His nose is hallucinating, his synapses misfiring to betray him with foggy snippets of memory—Mrs Hudson's voice, John's laugh, safety and faith and the whistling kettle.

He finds a lined parka, scratchy and hideous, to replace the sweater and huddles inside his own silent skin. He starts drinking coffee, when he drinks at all, but that's no less a vehicle for the past, and what he needs is to forget, to focus, to stop this dreaming.

_John's breath smells faintly of beer._ _Not the arresting smell of empty cans tossed in alleyways, but the sticky sweetness of a good, dark pint of stout. The warmth of good beer drunk in good company, the third of John's night. Not so drunk as to step outside himself, but enough so (with his cheeks pink, his eyes and blood warmed) to take Sherlock's face in his hands, fingers splayed across his jaw, moving with the hesitant deliberation of a dog who doesn't know what to do with the car he's finally caught. His forehead is hot against Sherlock's, his breath tickles Sherlock's lips, parting them even as his every other muscle is frozen in place._

Sherlock's chest tightens and he forces his eyes open. That beer smell was drastically different to the one that now lingers here, the sour, the almost fungal fumes of a solitary January death brought in around the trusted neck of a Saint Bernard.

John, of course, would have felt bad for these people and their sad endings, sputtering out in the gutter, inevitable and alone. Sherlock doesn't have the time; he is focusing on survival, his and John's. Lestrade's and Mrs Hudson's.

One day, he smells her perfume on a crowded bus and alights at the next stop, heart pounding, knees weak, and feet already carrying him in the direction of the train station. He makes it nearly two blocks before his brain takes over.

He can't go back to London, not yet. He has one more job to do.

vi.

When he does go, he ends up telling John, afterwards.

He doesn't strictly mean to—such incontrovertible evidence of sentimentality is something Mycroft would have him take to the grave—but there they are, the two of them, and it feels like _everything_. Tangled up in sheets and limbs and basking where the light, Sherlock knows, should be streaming through the drapes, wrapping and winding the dust motes in a lazy and brilliant haze, catching them in mid-air.

All he's aware of, though, is John's eyes on him, and they feel the same as golden flecks in John's hair, the pale flesh receding around his scar, his voice low and rough in Sherlock's ear, and it doesn't matter about the light or the dust because it's all completely irrelevant anyway.

John's fingers trace gently up his bare arms, and Sherlock shivers, sticky though he is with sweat. John's eyes hold him in place and after all these months apart, it's arresting, it's time-stopping to have him like this, to have him at all.

The world may ground to a halt but everything else keeps on spinning—entropy is unforgiving. It all keeps on spinning and his skinny bones are the axis of thousands of whirling words and thoughts and a year's worth of careening memories, all tumbling, spiralling centrifugally closer and closer, tighter and tighter, and he has to take in a deep breath. Then another.

The calm in John's eyes, his reverent stillness, his steady hands—these things all promise Sherlock that this storm is also only in his head, but he can't feel quite sure. He feels the urge to raise his palms to his face, to shield and curl in on himself, but instead, without really thinking, he parts his lips and opens his mouth and just like that, the words come tumbling out. Choked, jerky, staggered at the beginning, like the first trickles of sludgy water from a clogged pipe, but growing gradually faster and faster still, until his lips are moving independent of his mind and the memories are jumping, darting, flitting directly from him to John.

He starts, God knows why, with the curry (he suspects it's because he can still taste John on his tongue, something he never should have been allowed to know, but it's a fact that just moments ago Sherlock had put his mouth to fevered, salty skin and licked and tasted and bitten), with the chai and the naan, and how mad he must have been to pretend the way he had. He tells it like John would tell a story for his blog—a mad genius, spectacularly ignorant, the solar system—but John doesn't laugh or smirk or editorialise. He just bites his lower lip and turns the planes of his face upward to catch Sherlock's words,

The stories run together in a messy river of ink and styptic and his mounting desperation. "There was a girl," Sherlock tells John abruptly, because no transition can express what he means to say, no Flaubertian arrangement of the perfect words will do justice to the only piece of context that matters—the absence of John.

He explains about the playground and the scraped knee, and his words trip over one another when he gets to the smells and their interlocking memories. And still, John doesn't speak; he just catches Sherlock's fingers between his own and studies them, tests the mobility of their joints and the hardness of their nails. All the while, Sherlock's words run on like Scheherazade; he jumps his knight from square to square, trying to outrun the clock, trying to untangle these threads before they pull tight enough to trap him.

He gasps in a deep breath and dives into the story of the man with his limp, and he observes as John's jaw tightens and new lines form around his eyes. Time was, that shift would have meant everything—Sherlock would have read it all as easily as a traffic signal or the specials board outside a cafe. But his John is different now, buried under a year's worth of unfamiliar debris, and his face doesn't make sense anymore, not the way it used to. So Sherlock keeps on digging upwards with his bare hands, fingernails bending back and cracking, fighting the crushing weight of his absence.

"And I called you," he stutters out. "Over and over. But I-I'd just breathe at you... I couldn't... you'd pick up and..." He's aware that his hands are moving, fluttering in front of his face, but his lips seem to have stopped. His throat threatens to quiver around the next words and he swallows them down.

"I thought that was you," John muses softly, improbably. He's silent for a moment, testing the give of Sherlock's fingers knuckle by knuckle, each by each like the lines of the Rosetta Stone. "Or, well... I knew it couldn't be. You. But..."

The lines in his face are difficult, fraught. He appears to be shimmering, trembling on the edge of some steep chasm. Sherlock wouldn't be surprised to find that his very molecules were shuffling, rearranging his being to accommodate these new truths.

It hurts to consider this—he's avoided it so many times simply because his solitude meant he _could_ avoid it—but his mind keeps returning to the topic. John without him. John without Sherlock. It's only natural to wonder given that, by definition, he can only have known John _with_ Sherlock, John _since_ Sherlock, but why on earth should it be a topic of such fascination? Why does his mind choose to fixate on only one of the three men—the lost soldier, the blogger, and the...?

He supposes that's where the problem lies. John-with-Sherlock is easy to understand, something Sherlock knows better than most people can know anything. And John-before-Sherlock, that he can extrapolate Sherlock can imagine him. But the third personality is the one he doesn't know, who he can't know with the little data he has: one glimpse in the graveyard and another in the flat, staggering backwards, weak with shock at the sight of Sherlock's face.

When John had pulled back his fist, Sherlock had seen his blogger and some of the soldier, and then, when John had wiped the blood off Sherlock's face and the tears off his own, that had been his John, his, unequivocally. But now that the details of this past year have spilled across his lips, it's become real and Sherlock understands that there's a sliding scale now, some kind of tag team effort between the three. That was what John had needed to do to survive, and it had changed him, had caused this shift that Sherlock can't get a handle on. And Sherlock needs to be able to predict—that's who he is—and more than anything, he needs to be able to know John.

John, whose fingers are now stroking across his palm, pressing firmly into the ridge of muscle where his grip on the bow used to set off cramps. They're long forgotten now, and so are the calluses that once eddied his fingertips, but his body recognises the massage, one he'd used to perform for himself, and his heart tightens to think of John observing it, observing him, remembering.

He thinks of John in the days before his fall, silent, pensive, sensing. He imagines John in the weeks, the months after, moving through the flat as if navigating a sea of ash, echo-locating the memories and triggers in a soundless void. He sees John, surrounded by his things, diminished by the contrast between their presence and his absence, receding from the familiar, trying to guard his heart like he'd once guarded Sherlock.

It would have been better if John could have forgotten him. Sherlock knows this to be fact—it's undeniable—but for once he's glad for the irrationality of sentiment. He's certain that if John had forgotten him, he'd have simply disappeared. He's certain of this (in a way that crushes the air out of his lungs)—he knows, irrationally, that the only thing tying him to this earth and his body had been the one person who'd believed in him, who refused to forget.

"Is that... not good?" Sherlock's mouth quirks around the old words, not quite a smile. That had been a different man, and it stings to find himself still so stunted, so hopeless, so shackled.

John's face is reflecting that same odd not-smile back at him, the jet lag of years and hearts and handfuls of loamy earth. "What part?" he asks, and Sherlock wants to take centuries to bask in the shape his lips make around the P. All the memories of John's voice can't add up to watching him speak.

"The… the remembering," says Sherlock, and he hesitates because there's no feasible way for him to ask what he really wants to know, needs to know. "The way I did it. Is that not... what people do?"

Understanding breaks like a sunrise over John's creased brow. "Oh, no, that's... no. People remember," and he tries to rush through the looming pause, to deny it, but they both feel it's weight, "the people they love."

He waits like a student for a rap on the knuckles, but Sherlock has no intention of contradicting him. Even affirming that statement seems wholly, ludicrously unnecessary.

"Did you?" he asks, and John's eyes make a prolonged, fluttering blink before he gives Sherlock a minute nod, a distinctly military tilt of the chin. "Tell me," says Sherlock, and he can hear the hoarse hunger in his voice.

But John is already shaking his head, teeth gritted in an almost smiling mask of self-deprecation, the face that's meant to tell Sherlock that he can't understand, that he'll never truly grasp the difference between them, how human John is.

John swallows an aborted attempt at a deep breath. "You don't want to know about that," he says quietly, and it's patently absurd—John _must_ know this—to postulate that there exists data that Sherlock Holmes would actively choose to forfeit. He starts to move, to protest, but John cuts him off.

"It won't make you happy, Sherlock. Trust me. You don't..." His voice trails off and he studies Sherlock's face like he's a rare specimen, some pitiable creature on the edge of extinction. "But I don't have to tell you," he says in a voice like molasses. "...do I?" His mouth twists into a little moue of distaste. "You, you never have to ask. And it's me... you'll just see it. All of it."

Sherlock watches the struggle play out across John's face, the attempt to reconcile his desire to protect, his inability to prevent suffering.

"You don't have a choice, not really." John's tone is the oddest balance between grief and awe. It's true, though, what he's saying, though there's nothing Sherlock can do but hold his gaze and wait.

John sighs, and it's not one of the new ones that Sherlock has just spent the better part of an hour cataloguing (the ones that make his spine prickle and twist beneath his skin)—it's an old, familiar one. It's the one that means that John will give him what he wants, that John has weighed Sherlock's desires against his own and against his better judgment and social niceties and a thousand other things, and Sherlock still came out on top.

John blinks and licks his lips once. "It was difficult for me, Sherlock," he says, the way a veteran might try to explain the war to a child. "I was... I wasn't really all right." He stitches his lips together again like he must have done a thousand times in the desert because it makes his voice come out with surprising command. "But I don't want you to think about that. I don't want you to try to see. Not if you can help it."

That might be the most foolish thing anyone has ever said. Sherlock's mind goes blank.

No one has ever requested that of him before; something like that is basically impossible. It's fundamentally suicide. But then, John—John has never asked anything of him with that look in his eyes, and John is the truest friend he can imagine, and he can't cause John any more pain. He knows this.

"Okay?" asks John, eyes fixed on his.

Sherlock's mouth is dry, and part of his brain—the part that's concerned about weakness and biology and the losing side—is running through objection after objection at a Kalashnikov pace. But that isn't the part that kept him warm on interminable nights crouched under overpasses and squatting in abandoned buildings and parks, or that pulled breath after breath from his lungs when his chest burned in time with his pulse and his footfalls on the pavement echoed waves of pain through his joints. Sherlock knows better and so he listens to the part of his brain that sustained him and he breathes out as he nods his head.

John's voice comes out hoarse. "Thank you." He swallows, and it sounds like his throat must be as dry as Sherlock's. When he moves again, a moment later, he does it quietly; he takes Sherlock's face gently in his hands, palms warm against each cheek, pressing their foreheads together, not blinking until finally his eyelashes touch his cheeks and his lips touch Sherlock's.

It's heart-stopping, everything this kiss teaches him—more eloquent than the soft, wet ground after a rainstorm or dust or any type of tobacco known to man; Sherlock could float away on the sheer volume of information and emotion. He can taste it, the anguish, the loneliness, the bitter joy that he's made John suffer, and beneath his palms, John's heart is pounding a counterpoint. The ragged breaths in his ears could belong to either of them but Sherlock knows the familiar scent filling his nostrils and it belongs only to John. He didn't get to ask his question (he may never, now) and his eyes are dark and closed, but between the faithful warmth of John's skin and the seeking press of his lips, oh, he can _see_.

Find the full text of Sonnet 50 here. Also contains a bit of The Wasteland (because that's what I do, I guess) and a snippet of my favorite Neruda. Oh, and when Sherlock stitches John up, he's reciting the citric acid cycle, which I know nothing about and should apologize for. I do hope you enjoyed it!


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